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Stiles was grateful when Derek’s phone rang; boredom and stillness do not make for a happy Stiles. He listened while Derek spoke quietly to Isaac, at one point leaning so far over the arm of the chair that he slipped to the side. Righting himself, he poked at the cloth covering his eyes then snorted and coughed as the scent made its way to the back of his throat. Vile was being kind, and he wondered briefly if Derek’s slowly disappearing voice was for privacy or for self-preservation. He hoped it was the latter, although he was sure his eavesdropping had not gone unnoticed. When he felt fingers at his temples, he jerked back.
“Relax. And stop listening to other people’s conversations.” Derek huffed, Stiles leaned back and dropped his hands. “Christ, this thing smells like...”
“Ass,” Stiles supplied cheerfully.
“Yeah, or something like it,” Derek pulled the cloth away then Stiles felt a warm cloth dab his eyes. He took the cloth and cleaned the rest of the sticky ointment from his face, then made a face when the cloth stuck to the corner of his eye. Ew. When his face was as clear as he was going to get it, he opened his eyes. He blinked a few times and tried to focus on the space in front of him. “Well?”
“It’s better. I can see you,” he spoke slowly and lifted his hands. “Kind of. Like, your shape? But it’s ...” He lifted his face to look at Derek and saw Derek. He saw Derek’s silhouette, white, with a moving outline of red. The red pulsed a steady beat and Stiles wondered if he was actually watching Derek’s heartbeat.
“It’s what?”
“I can see where you are but, am I seeing your aura? Dude, this is freaky.” He waved a hand and saw his arm, or the white shape of his arm with a steady silver outline, then he swung wide and hit Derek’s head and drew back. “Oh God. Sorry.”
But was cool. Their colors wrapped around one another for a microsecond then righted themselves. He wondered what would happen if he touched Derek for longer but at Derek’s huff, and the annoyance he imagined on Derek’s face, he held back. Derek’s red flickered another shade of red briefly, then cooled down.
“But it worked.” Derek asked, without actually asking.
“Yeah. It definitely did something.” He looked around. “I can see shapes but nothing on them. Like, you’re sitting on the table but I can’t see if anything is on the table. It’s white outlined in white. But you and I have colors? I don’t know. You’re red, like angry bright alpha red.”
He tried to think of anything he’d read about auras or lights or blindness but nothing came to mind, and certainly nothing that would explain what he was currently experiencing. He watched Derek move into the kitchen. When Derek moved, his aura - and that is what Stiles was calling it - shimmered and seemed to rotate around him. It was like when Derek moved, his aura needed to move as well. Stiles lifted his arm again and saw his aura flicker but it didn’t shimmer like Derek’s. Was that the werewolf aura, the supernatural that made it shimmer rather than simply be?
“We should make more of that stuff,” he heard himself say. Was the aura thing something he could always see or was this a side effect of the salve? Was this permanent or was this, like, a sight beneath usual?
“We have to wait until tonight.” He watched Derek’s silhouette move to a wall and look at it - and Stiles had a fleeting moment where he hoped there was actually a window and not just Derek staring at a wall. When Derek turned, Stiles twisted his body more towards the wall and Derek’s color. Was red for the alpha? “Deaton said that if it worked you were supposed to use it once in the morning and once tonight. Anymore in a single day could be harmful.”
“Could be,” Stiles repeated. “But not definitely. And by harmful he meant?”
“I don’t know, Stiles. Maybe the aura thing isn’t a good thing,” he heard the tone around aura when Derek sighed and could actually see Derek’s silhouette deflate slightly. He almost didn’t hear when Derek said, “It has powdered wolfsbane in it.”
“Woah,” Stiles sat up straighter, “Wolfsbane? Isn’t that poison? I’m distinctly remembering an arm incident and the rave. Does ice cream van mean anything to you? And, again, the carnival? And let’s not forget the Valentine’s Day debacle. Jesus, man. How much wolfsbane? Is it poison for humans? Is this like werewolf acid?”
“Laura had some in the kitchen,” he continued over Stiles, then he straightened and turned. “Small doses won’t kill a werewolf, you know that. And it doesn’t hurt humans, which you also know. But I’d rather not keep slapping it on your face.”
“Why would your sister have wolfsbane?” Stiles wondered as he leaned back; nerves and fear prickled at his back and made his eyes begin to itch. He pressed his fingers to his closed eyes again until he saw colors against the backs of his lids. When he opened them again he raised both hands and watched the colored circles fade into the white abyss until only his silvered arms remained. He wasn’t surprised when Derek ignored him, but he began to think of reasons a werewolf would keep a werewolf poison. He made a mental note to research positive uses for wolfsbane, or at least why a werewolf would want to keep it in her apartment.
“So what did Isaac want?”
“A group of hunters are at the Argents’s house,” Derek answered as he walked away from the window.
“Are we surprised by this?”
“Yes,” Derek sat down on the sofa near Stiles’s chair, “Chris hasn’t acted against us since ... a while.” Gerard hung in the air and Stiles chose to ignore that avenue of conversation.
“Are they the hunters from last night?”
“No,” Derek leaned back, his head falling against the sofa back. The vulnerability of the pose was not lost on Stiles: bared neck, head back, stretched arms, body open. “Unless there was one we didn’t know about.”
“No,” Stiles shook his head slowly. “Pretty sure you got them all. Took care of them, if I recall.”
“Then more are in the party or more have come to town. Or the Argents are up to something.”
“I think ... Derek there was something about the guy last night. He wasn’t like the other hunters.”
“So you said.”
“No. It’s like he knew about the bomb and the trap outside, but he couldn’t have. I finished setting them up when you were inside.” He thought back to the previous night: the hunter’s knife at his throat and feeling the blade slide over his skin, the sickly groans of the men and the wet growls of the wolves, the fear of the explosion and the panic of being held up for the slaughter. But something else itched in his mind. Something about the way the hunter had held him, the way his grip had held Stiles paralyzed.
“Isaac’s watching the Argents and if anything changes he’ll let me know. Everyone else is staying low.” Derek’s voice brought him back and he leaned back, tucked his legs under his chin.
“Including Scott?”
Derek sighed. “Including Scott. As long as he doesn’t spend another the night on the Argent’s roof.”
Stiles nodded. “Creeping does seem to be something you guys excel at. Is that part of the werewolf transformation? Hairy nights, leather days, creeping on unsuspecting humans anytime?”
“We do prefer night for the creeping,” Derek answered as he stood and walked past Stiles, then leaned down to whisper, “Less likely of being caught.” He tapped two fingers against Stiles’s knee then walked away.
“Funny,” he watched the red walk to the kitchen and begin to make what smelled like lunch. “Who knew there was a comedian under all that leather and scruff.”
He spent the next hour listening to Derek walk around, make lunch, and clean. It all felt strangely domestic for a man who looked like be belonged on a Most Wanted poster, then Stiles snorted when he remembered that Derek actually had been on a Most Wanted poster. Twice. He leaned his chin on his fist and watched Derek move from one counter to another, and this was a far cry from the man who apparently do not live in the derelict train depot. The movements looked easy, rehearsed, and ... normal.
When the oven buzzed he shook his head and stood, then walked slowly to the table and slid into one of the chairs. He touched the plate when Derek set it down, then felt around for the fork. White against white against white still made some things difficult.
“So where’d you learn to cook?” he asked and slowly lifted a pasta-filled fork to his mouth. Sausage, sage, pasta, cheese, and ... chili? He decided he needed to ‘borrow’ Derek’s cookbook when this vision thing was over.
“Around. When you don’t have someone to cook for you,” Derek said eventually, “you learn to either eat microwaved meals, which taste like chemicals and plastic, or you learn to cook.”
Oh. Stiles hmmed over the next forkful. He’d learned to cook for his dad about a year after his mom died and wanted to smack himself for not assuming the same for Derek. But the guy just ... didn’t ooze competency and multi-efficiency; he certainly didn’t look like a man who knew his way around a kitchen.
“The real question, I guess, is how do you know what plastic tastes like? And do you have a favorite flavor?”
Derek coughed around a laugh and Stiles could see him shake his head. “Eat enough noodles in a cup and you figure it out. Werewolf or not.”
Stiles debated the next question, part of him wanted to learn more about Derek, just wanted to keep talking. This was uncharted land after all. But he also knew he needed more everything else. “So this Alpha Pack is a pack of alphas.”
“Knew Scott kept you around for something,” Derek mumbled.
“My deductive skills, clearly,” Stiles countered. “But what do they want? Why are they here? And why now?” He filled the silence that followed by scratching his fork against the plate.
“I don’t know. I’ve only heard rumors of an alpha pack.”
“Like an urban-wolf legend?”
“Christ,” Derek grunted and rolled his head to one side, then the other, before looking back at Stiles. “I don’t know. They come for other alphas. A werewolf gains strength from its pack, so--”
“If you have a pack of alphas, you have a stronger pack.” Stiles finished. “That makes sense. And they came for you?”
“I don’t know.” Derek repeated, his frustration clear. Stiles watched Derek push his plate away then hold his head against his fisted hands. He wished he could see more than the angry red that deepened as they spoke, it sputtered then deepened again. “They have Erica and Boyd. Which is either meant to show my weakness as an alpha or ... I don’t know.”
“Or meant as a gift?” Stiles thought aloud. “Like they could have killed them, which hopefully they haven’t, but they’ll return them to you so that you can ...” he couldn’t actually say it, so he let the words kill them and strengthen yourself hang in the air, “to join their pack?”
“Maybe.” Stiles pushed his own plate at the wrecked tone, at the ball that settled in his belly.
“Would you?” he asked quietly. He had no doubt Peter would; Peter who still looked at him a fraction too long, whose voice took a deeper turn when he asked about the beautiful red-headed Lydia in the silver dress.
“No,” Derek replied, then pushed away from the table. “Would you?”
Before he could answer Derek left the room; his aura a sharp blood red, pulsing fast and angrily. Stiles stayed where he was, unable to move and feeling suddenly alone. Without his sight and without someone else’s breathing to focus on, everything became eerily still. He hadn’t realized how loud it had been when Derek had been moving around and breathing. He hadn’t realized how little of the outside he couldn’t hear, until now. A second later Stiles heard what he assumed was the bedroom door slam shut and let out a sigh. “That went well.”
He touched around the table and felt for Derek’s plate, grabbed his own and stacked them quietly, then walked slowly across the kitchen and felt for the sink. He placed the two plates and silverware in the sink, carefully feeling around so that he didn’t knock something else over. White against white, he cursed.
He made his way back into the living room and settled on the sofa. He’d crossed a line, one that he knew he’d been edging towards but one that he couldn’t help but cross over. Curiosity had always been his worst vice. And now he was blind in a strange apartment with a man who was tentatively a friend; and who might be feeling more obligation than friendship at this point. It was Derek’s turn Stiles thought, and the ball in his belly grew cold.
Somewhere between last night and today, he realized he didn’t want to be an obligation. He didn’t want to be keeping score. He wanted more than trust with Derek. He already considered him a friend, and wanted it reciprocated. Not likely now though.
He fluffed one of the pillows then leaned his head against the armrest of the sofa and tried to clear his mind. He fell back on his now-usual habit of reciting the bestiary in his mind, trying to remember entries from Alison’s family and the snippets he’d picked up from Derek and Deaton. He never trusted the words out of Peter’s mouth, but he believed the text he’d seen on the old laptop. After he’d run through what he could remember, he began to focus on certain pages of the two bestiaries and tried to draw the pictures in his mind: there was the kanima and the sketch of what Jackson could have become, there was the omega’s shape when it became less than an omega, there was the pictured list of the hunter’s tools for the hunt and for after. He shivered and shut that mental book.
He glanced to his wrist then rolled his eyes: no sight, no time. And Derek was still hiding away.
He mentally flipped to the book Deaton had lent him. He closed his eyes and started listing the herbs; detailing what they looked like, which ones were similar and which ones could be substituted for one another, and then he began listing each of their properties -- both medicinal and ‘other’. After he went through the ones that he could remember, twice, he tried to focus on the ones he could picture but not remember. Hadn’t there been one that had yellow petals with blue dots on the outer rim? And one that looked like a lily, but wasn’t there something about its center?
He let out a sigh and accepted that boredom was worse when you couldn’t see and had no one to talk to. On a whim, he stood and tentatively made his way to where Derek had stood earlier.
His sight was getting more and more in focus as the afternoon went on, but rather than actually seeing anything it was like the shapes and colors were becoming more distinct. Off-white table, with dusty-white papers on it, against a pearl white floor; egg-white bookcase sitting on the pearl-white floor and next to the ivory wall. The books lining the shelves were different shades of different shades of white that he didn’t even want to consider naming. He had never wanted to see a black leather jacket or black ripped shirt so much in his life.
He walked to the window and touched his fingers to the glass, it didn’t look all that different from the walls but he could feel the temperature difference between the wall and the glass, could feel the difference in touch between glass and wallpaper. And, of course, outside he could make out the people. Distinctive human shapes with colored outlines that were all dull brown that walked down, what Stiles assumed was, the streets; some waited at, what Stiles assumed was, the bus stop. Some flickered yellow but then quickly settled back to muted brown.
“What do you see?” Derek asked from behind him and Stiles was proud of himself for not jumping.
“People.” He nodded outside and kept his gaze straight. “Lots of white; there are about fifteen different shades of white just in this room. And, honestly? I didn’t know there was more than white and white white. But the people out there are white outlined in brown.”
“Not red. So ... not werewolves?” Derek wondered.
“I don’t know. I’d need to see another werewolf to test. Maybe red is for alpha? But then I’m silver. So, who knows?”
“Because you’re the spark.” He heard the eye-roll and he smiled sardonically.
“Maybe,” he turned. Derek’s red had subdued and was back to what it had been before lunch. “I’m sorry. About before.”
Derek shook his head. “It’s fine. There are Alphas who might kill their pack to gain strength.” Stiles heard the hurt and desperately wanted to fix whatever he had broken; and hoped that it wasn’t the trust they had established last night. “I’ll start making the salve.”
“Derek,” he swallowed and watched Derek turn to face him. “I don’t think you’d kill Erica or Boyd, or anyone in your pack. But I think that a pack of alphas who have been toying with you for weeks might put you in a bad situation.” Derek nodded, a single and curt nod, then turned. Stiles sighed and shook his head, “Okay then.”
He walked around the snow-white chair and sofa, careful to avoid the milky table, and leaned against the counter. He watched Derek move around the kitchen then frowned when Derek’s red snapped bright, nearly fluorescent, red.
“That’s the wolfsbane, right?” Derek tilted his head toward Stiles in a quasi-nod. “Your light changed. Dude, I know this is annoying. Trust me. But, this is also really cool. Hey.” He took a step closer and grabbed Derek’s arm, again their colors danced against one another until Derek pulled away.
“Stiles,” Derek growled.
“Right,” Stiles took a step back. “You’re salving my problem.” He could help but grin at the pun and imagined Derek rolling his eyes. “But I have an idea. Lie to me.”
“What?”
“Tell me a lie, Derek. I want to test something.”
“I like having you here,” Derek replied deadpan and made Stiles sigh.
“No, tell me something that you would actually lie about.” Stiles ignored the way his heart thumped, because wasn’t it something that he didn’t need this test to know that that hadn’t been lie?
Derek huffed and poured something into something. “I just got off the phone with Scott, he’s on his way over to take you home.”
Derek’s light dimmed and flickered quickly before steadying back to its regular thrum of light, and if Stiles hadn’t been looking he would have missed the flicker.
“Awesome.” At Derek’s head tilt he took a step forward and Derek’s light pulled towards him. Awwwesome, and definitely something to think about later. “I saw the lie, like you can hear when I lie. Your light lied to me.”
“Don’t get used to this, Stiles.” Derek grabbed him by the arm and led him to the chair he’d been in that morning. “Now. An hour and a half this time.”
Stiles tilted his face up and smiled. “You make a horrible nursemaid, Derek, but don't worry I won't tell anyone. I'll tell everybody that you were sweet and kind and offered me cookies.”
“Shut up,” Derek smacked the cloth on Stiles’s face with a bit more force than necessary and Stiles couldn’t help the chuckle the escaped. He righted the cloth and leaned back so his head was facing upwards and rested against the back of the chair’s cushion. The smell was worse, he thought, the second time around because he knew it was coming; and he had watched Derek’s hands saturate the cloth until an inch of its life. Maybe overkill on the salve as a passive aggressive payback? He tilted his head to the side when the TV beside him switched on and the local news started.
Derek Hale watched the news.
Huh.
Stiles smiled during the weekend weather report and Monday’s forecast; sunshine for Beacon Hills. They sat quietly listening to the local news, then the national news. The newly re-elected president had given a press conference about some attack and the pundits were debating the merits of the speech. And Stiles realized that even with kanimas, werewolves, and hunters -- there was an entire functioning, or not-so-functioning-functioning, world out there completely in the dark. A world that kept on going with werewolves and the sudden blindness of a single human teenager.
Then Derek announced that he was going to grab a pizza; he needed to check on Isaac and needed some fresh air. Stiles waited until the door shut - not slammed - before mumbling, “Me too.”
Alone, again, he realized it was true. The apartment felt cramped and stuffy; and, yes, he accepted the ridiculousness of feeling cramped he couldn’t even really see the walls. He pressed his fingers to his eyes again and rubbed the salve in. He wasn’t sure if it would help or not but he was beginning to feel antsy and, without Derek to bounce conversation off of, he was beginning to feel jittery as well. He consciously stilled his bouncing leg and tried to still his fingers from tapping and his toes from wiggling.
When the door opened again, he smelled Classic ‘Meat Lovers’ from Pissano’s and groaned. Then loudly praised Derek Hale: Visually-Abled Werewolf and Carnivore. He began to pull the cloth off until Derek’s barked, “No” stopped him. “Another ten minutes.”
The next groan was annoyance and frustration. Patience was another virtue that Stiles lacked. He heard plates clink against one another, then against the counter, and Stiles was glad for the noise. Glad when Derek hmmed and when he breathed louder than necessary. And when he heard the change of footfall from hardwood to carpet, he readied himself. Derek’s heat warmed him and he felt the smooth touch of jean to jean as their legs bumped, then when Derek’s leg leaned more heavily against his. Derek’s fingers peeled the cloth and Stiles had to bite away his smile when Derek made a distinctly disgusted sound. But he didn't stop.
Then came the washing cloth and this time Stiles kept his hands down, enjoying the feel of someone else cleaning his ‘wounds’. Derek was surprisingly, or not ... given the weekend so far, gentle. His breath came in soft puffs and Stiles unconsciously steadied his own breathing until he fell into the same rhythm.
“Okay,” Derek whispered. Both salve and cleaning cloths were away but Stiles couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes. If it didn’t work ... “Stiles,” Derek gently cupped his face and ran his thumbs under Stiles’s eyes. “Open your eyes and tell me what you see.”
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. And smiled. It wasn’t back to normal, but it was so much better. “Thank God,” he choked out. “It’s not better but colors and shapes. Your face is a fuzzy blur. But you’re --wow, shocker -- wearing a dark short sleeved shirt.”
“I like dark shirts,” Derek muttered and moved his hand to Stiles’s shoulder then pulled him up.
“No, no,” he tried to steady the excitement in his voice, “I get that. Brooding and mysterious. Blending into the night.”
“Can’t see blood.” Derek continued, “Harder to see the woods that I used to live near and where the hunters used to follow me. Cheaper than patterns and colors, and easier to buy in bulk.”
“You’re no fun when you’re being sensible, Derek.” He grinned and then had to bite his tongue when he saw Derek’s blurred face wrinkle in a smile. Because he had made that smile, and because he could actually see the wrinkles in the blurred face.
“You’re not here for fun,” Derek countered and pushed him into his seat.
“We’ve had fun,” Stiles noted. “We’ve talked.”
“I don’t like talking,” Derek countered.
“Lie,” Stiles crowed. “I saw the aura thing. But it’s,” he squinted and tilted his head. How did he explain that it? “It’s like ... there. But not.”
Derek was silent for a moment, but Stiles could see the pizza in his hand. He could see the blurred pizza shape with yellow and red and brown. God bless Deaton and Derek and every other D in Beacon Hills. “So you still see the colors?”
“Not as strong, like the stronger my vision gets the weaker the auras get. And just now it flashed and was gone.” He answered and took a bite. “Bummer.”
The conversation then moved to less “problem” areas. Jackson, who was still in the East Coast and only checked in when Derek called. Good news: he hadn’t killed or attacked anyone; bad news: he still sounded like a jackass. School was out in a week for winter break, which Stiles proclaimed was worth a hunter-free, life-threatening-free weekend. After they finished eating, Stiles watched Derek walk to the counter, which was dark by the way and the cupboards were brown, to put the dishes in the sink.
“So what now?” he asked.
“Now you can listen to a movie that I watch,” Derek replied and pulled him, gently, to his feet. If Derek seemed to be touching him more, Stiles decided not to say anything. There was something safe and reassuring about the ease of having Derek’s hand on his shoulder and neck; the feeling of safety, security and strength. He almost wished he could see what their silver and reds were doing at that spot.
“Can it have explosions? I can see the colors change,” Stiles asked.
“Just watch the movie, Stiles.”
When he heard the beginning of Transformers, he settled himself on the sofa next to Derek with a smile.